National Hamburger Festival

Whether you like your burger medium-rare, with onion rings on top, or made of bison you can find it at Akron’s National Hamburger Festival. With over 30,000 burger fanatics in attendance and 25 different vendors, the Northeast Ohio festival is considered to be the largest hamburger-themed festival in the United States. Besides the massive quantities of beef, the event includes an amateur burger cook-off, a beauty pageant, eating contest, concerts, and other hamburger-themed events. One of the most popular competitions is the “bobbing for burgers” event. Participants have three minutes to retrieve as many burgers as possible from a kiddie pool filled with ketchup. Winners receive a free t-shirt and bragging rights, of course. The National Hamburger Festival celebrates the beloved summer meal and is hosted in Akron, because some historians believe Northeast Ohio residents, Frank and Robert Menches, invented the hamburger in 1885.